Reuters Partners With Yahoo For Citizen Media Site
This week, Reuters and Yahoo launched "You Witness News," a Web site that allows amateur photojournalists an opportunity to submit their pictures and videos of newsworthy events. The best pictures will then be displayed on Reuters and Yahoo's online news sites, accompanying written coverage of the events.
"Citizen journalism" has become something of a buzzword in the past few years - with the advent of YouTube, Flickr and the like. And I have been pondering lately some of the ways that associations can tap into this passion. When you think about it, citizen journalists, for the most part, are volunteers, and just like the volunteer leaders we work with every day, these folks are so passionate about weather or photography or the perfect cup of coffee or seeing their name on Yahoo News that they will take the time to upload their photos and their videos.
Association staff - like Yahoo and Reuters staff - cannot be everywhere all the time. Yahoo's You Witness site goes one step beyond just accepting photos and videos and actually has video lessons on how to take the perfect picture, the quickest way to upload materials and how to tell a story.
I don't have the budget to start a Mississippi Hospital Association You Witness site, but I can easily put a blurb on my Web site encouraging members to send me their photos and videos of industry-related events and happenings, from a training drill in their hospital to an opening reception at a national convention.
While I'm still pondering how associations can tap into the zeitgeist of citizen journalism, let me know if you have any ideas. You can leave a comment here or e-mail me directly at slea@mhanet.org. I'll post a round-up of all the responses when I have thought it through a bit more. And if you have any examples of associations tapping into citizen journalism, please let me know that also.
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Comments
Great post, I look forward to seeing the summary of ideas. I'm at the Association of Internet Marketing & Sales (Canada) and a few months ago I reached out to our membership and set up a handful of regular correspondents on our blog (http://blog.aimscanada.com).
Each correspondent has committed to sending in one post per month. A few of the categories:
- Monthly member profile (Q&A format)
- Posts about topics we're discussing at upcoming events
- Summaries of other events
- Perspective/analysis on industry news items
In reality anyone can post anything (through a moderator). Members can send in a question and I'll post it for the community. But I've found that setting up regular correspondents has been good for members and great for helping me keep the blog fresh and active.
Posted by: Kathryn Lagden | December 7, 2006 7:56 AM